The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  

A Sherlock Holmes short story

• Mystery, crime, detective, British Lit
• Published: 1904
• My edition: The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volume II
• Annotated by: William S. Baring-Gould
• Setting: England; 1894

 

This is Holmes’ second case after Conan Doyle brought the detective back from the dead—the presumed dead that is. But that was all explained in "The Adventure of the Empty House".

 

In this caper, Holmes is brought in to solve a murder that has baffled police detective Stanley Hopkins. Baffled police is often, not always, how Holmes comes by his cases, but Detective Hopkins is a new foil.

 

The victim is the young male secretary to an aged and infirm professor who is writing his magnum opus. The young man has no enemies, nothing appears to have been stolen, and the professor and two domestics can offer irrefutable alibis for each other. The murder weapon is a sealing wax knife, suggesting a crime of passion, not the weapon one would employ in a premeditated attack. The only other clue at the scene is a pair of golden pince-nez.

 

Which of course is more than enough for Holmes to deduce a likely scenario that only wants a bit of testing.

 

Ho hum. I’m a bit more than half-way through the Holmes canon, and I’m growing a bit dubious. Perhaps a little bit of Sherlock is better than every bit. His skill of observation is impressive, but I find that his deductions are often too narrow. What he deduces is certainly plausible, but it is seldom the only possibility; yet, he’s rarely wrong.

 

Still his adventures are usually great fun: banter with Watson, snide commentary of the constabulary efforts, various idiosyncrasies, Watson’s love life, all mostly absent from this tale. Though “Ho hum” is a bit harsh. Perhaps “meh” is more in tune.

 

One quotable by Sherlock. When the detective arrives at 221B Baker Street, shortly before midnight, Holmes is excited by the probability of a caper and opines to Watson…

...all virtuous folk have been long in bed.
 

He can turn a phrase.

 

 

"The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” is part of Return of Sherlock Holmes collection, though I read it from The Annotated Sherlock Holmes: a two-volume collection of all 60 cases (four novels and 56 short stories), which attempts to put all of Holmes’ cases into fictional chronological order. According to The Annotated collection, “The Adventure of the Pince-Nez” is Sherlock Holmes’ 33nd case.

 

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Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (novel #263)

  

Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure. ~ Daniel Doyce to Arthur Clennam

 

Indeed! There must have been a lot of learning going on in this slightly atypical Dickens story.

 

• Author: Charles Dickens
• Victorian lit, British lit
• First Published: 1857
• My edition: Project Gutenberg, free book (eBook)
• Setting: England, briefly in France and Italy, early 19th century
•  Also by this author (that I’ve read): Most of his novels and short stories. For a complete listing, see my Dickens page.

Of the title character, I always assumed Little Dorrit was a child. Dorrit, Amy Dorrit, is a young woman of 22, but she is so slight that she is sometimes mistaken for a child. To her friends and family she is Little Dorrit, a sobriquet she happily owns. Before she was born, Her father, William Dorrit, was confined to the Marshalsea, England’s notorious debtor prison. His family is allowed to live with him, though they may come and go. Little Dorrit, is born within the walls of the Marshalsea and her mother dies when she is a child. Tending to father and family, is the sum of her life’s story—a life she is contentedly suited to.

 

Atypical I said, though I am hard pressed to elucidate. I felt it more than I apprehended it. Dickens usually woos me to love some humble character and then breaks my heart when they suffer cruel injustice. The humble character, in this instance Little Dorrit, is the soul of virtue, kindness, humility, and love, but she isn’t miserable; I couldn’t quite pity her. The cruel injustice, so different in this case, comes from good fortune. William Dorrit experiences a reversal of fortunes. He and two other children want to forget their former shame. With it, they also forget Little Dorrit’s constancy and labors of love on their behalf. She is an embarrassment when she does not, in their eyes, rise to the family’s new social status. For this they cruelly berate her, and now—she is pitiable.

 

There are other reversals of fortune; in other directions, and other Dickens hallmarks: preposterous caricatures, a heinous villain, comic relief, a hopeless love story, and that signature oh, so satisfying justice in the end. This is the second Dickens novel in a row with a talking bird (part of the comic relief), though the talking parrot in Little Dorrit does not steal scenes as the Raven Grip did in Barnaby Rudge.

 

Did I mention two Dickens in a row? I just finished 700+ pages of Barnaby Rudge when The Classic Club Spin landed on this 1,000+ page story. And before the two Dickens novels I had the 800+ page Stephen King novel 11/22/63. I am ready for some lighter_­ fare—literally as in something lighter than a 3 pound book.

 

But I don’t mean to complain. All three were very good. For Little Dorrit…

 

I give it 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

This was title #31 of 50 for The Classics Club Challenge –Round IV, and my spin read for The Classics Club Spin #45

 

Have you read Little Dorrit? Did you find it atypical? Where do you rank it amongst Dickens’ novels?

 

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